Miura's art style has been a hot topic since Berserk returned this year in Ep 344. And while I've seen discussion range in various places from "all digital" to "no digital," I'm actually finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the position that he's not using any digital techniques, even with his manga pages. Obviously he showed off his very digital paintings in Vol 38, but how much of that is translating into his pages? I'd say some but I would wager he's still using a traditional pen and ink as a base for these.

The most glaring thing to me was this 2-page spread in Ep 344. Does anything stick out to you in these images? It's those bushes. That's from the official YA scans, and here is the same page from my copy of Vol 38, there's a preview image at the end of Ep 344. No change. Those bushes still stick out from everything else on the page, and they look digitally manipulated to me. We also know that Miura's team of assistants has started using digital screentones to create textures. Traditional screentones have been used since the 90s on clothing, capes, backgrounds and whatnot. But now they're almost certainly digital. The textures on the witches' outfits is where the move to digital is the most prominent.

My assessment, as a non artist, is that those who say he's not using ANY digital techniques don't appear to be correct, but that we also can't say for sure he's using ONLY digital techniques. It looks to me more like he's taking advantage of some digital tools on top of his traditional pen and ink drawings to increase efficiency.

Either way, I'm interested in hearing the opinions of those who can actually recognize the smoking gun of an illustrator software being used, because I don't really see it in the line art itself.

I think the move to digital is irrefutable at this point, so like you said, it's only a matter of finding out whether anything is still done traditionally. I've said it when this was first brought up, but to be honest, while I liked the idea of Miura as this old school guy who stuck by the traditional tools in an age of digital creation, it's hard to not see the logic in such a move. For example, given how laborious it is to produce screentones the traditional way, it honestly just makes more sense to do them on the computer. Anyway, the entire industry is digital now, and you can only delay getting on board for so long. Even if it's not the case yet, sooner or later, everything or almost will be done digitally. So more power to Miura and his team for living with the times.

With that being said, I hope the double page reveal of the King of the Flower Storm's tree in episode 344 gets overhauled before it ends up in the volume, because the desired effect was not a success.

I feel there's an unmistakable digital touch to Miura's recent works, and the evidence i'm putting forwards is the new design of predominately black materials such as Guts' armour and cape.

In the older episodes it was clear Miura went to a lot of trouble to use the white of the paper as the lightest point and progressively crosshatched darker tones around these points. These more recent episodes look much more like Miura began from a completely black surface and then drew in the white.

Not impossible to do physically, but the opportunity to draw in different values is a definite staple of digital artwork.

One of the most noticeable differences to me, and what makes me believe most of the lineart is now digital, is that he's using a thicker brush line for elements he previously used a liner like Pigma Microns on. Most predominantly, the hatching for shading on necks, and the inside of Schierke's hat.

On the top panel the strokes have no pressure sensitivity. It's most likely from a liner or a similar pen with no or little variation of size on pressure. On the bottom panel the strokes begin thin and get thicker, like with a brush. Something about the wobbliness I mentioned on previous posts and how the brushstroke goes from thin to thick very suddenly (something he had mastered with an actual brush so the variation was smoother and more natural) makes me believe that's digital lineart.

the paintings are digital so i'm just gonna skip that. when it comes to the black and white manga itself, what sticks out the most to me is how thick and smooth the line art is and how smooth the screentones are.

the line-art on ged looks like it was done with a standard round brush with some pen pressure, these kind of lines can be replicated easily. the screentone on his hat is light colored, smooth and less textured. the rain falling down is most likely on a completely seperate layer aswell. the shadow on ged's face that's coming from the hat is super smooth, it looks like a gradient, really even transition. they probably used that exact same screentone from the hat but made it very low opacity.

this here is a comparison between 2 panels, the panel on the top is guts from digital volume 38 which might i add looks very similar to the print volume 38 and the bottom panel is from the digital YA issue. as you can see, the top panel looks grainy and has texture to it, looks traditional. the bottom panel looks much smoother, the screentones are cleaner, they dont have those random white dots or texture that the top panel has. the lines on guts' hair look smooth and done with a digital brush with pen pressure.

here morda's hat has a darker and more textured screentone, then on the right you have that same smooth light less textured screentone. but you could argue that there is fire under her so the lighting changed. one thing to note, the morda on the right, her hat has doesn't have those lines on the bottom, image on the right has them and the the schierke that Eluvei posted has them aswell.Source: both digital YA

here is just a random comparison of guts smiling, looks better in the new style in my opinion.

digital screentones are very easy to apply and save quite a lot of time, for those who don't know how they work, ill explain. i've tried digital screentones in photoshop, manga studio and coral painter and all the high quality screentones pretty much work the same way. they are normal brushes, all you have to do is fill in the spot you want to tone, what makes this easier is they do not overlap.as you can see, i used a few different screentones here to demonstrate, i take 1 horizontal stroke and one verticle stroke, when the strokes meet in the middle, the middle area doesn't get darker, there is no overlap. the reason why this happens is because these brushes are part of a bigger texture that's covering you're entire canvas, by making a stroke, you're making part of that texture visible, that's how you should think of it.

digital screentoning saves A LOT of time, my question is, is miura the one who does the screentones? if so, he's saving a lot of time. if his assistants are doing it then they're the ones saving time.

Sakamoto has been using the digital medium for a very long time, his previous series titled "the climber" started out traditionally and switched to digital in the later volumes, his work innocent which is 9 volumes is completely digital, innocent rouge, the sequel is also 2 volumes fully digital. by the time he started innocent he was already very good at using the digital medium and making it look traditional. it also appears that he's using manga studio exclusively, one thing that makes his art look digital is that his lines have a canvas texture, he's either adding canvas texture to the brush itself or the canvas, I've yet to find out how to do that in manga studio.

the line-art on ged looks like it was done with a standard round brush with some pen pressure, these kind of lines can be replicated easily. the screentone on his hat is light colored, smooth and less textured.

I don't mind it on other characters, but I can't say I like the use of a pressure sensitive brush for the facial wrinkles and details on Gedflynn. I always loved it when Miura went wild with the liner on old people's faces, look at this sad, destroyed old man and compare his wrinkles to Ged's:

Dude's just minutiously rendered, Gedflynn's wrinkles end up looking more suggestive and gracious with the brush and the economy of strokes that inevitably comes with it. It's not bad, and I suppose it fits the character, but I just like my old men looking like the bastard above and Miura does it like no one else with the thin lines.

And the screentone is so smooth that it looks like he's too affected by light and shadow when compared to other characters. I understand it's supposed to be a dramatic entrance with his face sort of obscured, but I think he looks stylistically at odds with the gang under that tonal gradient.

Those things and the double page Aaz mentioned are the only things I don't really like here.

this here is a comparison between 2 panels, the panel on the top is guts from digital volume 38 which might i add looks very similar to the print volume 38 and the bottom panel is from the digital YA issue.

Wow, there's a huge difference in quality. YA's digital issue just looks filtered to oblivion, blurry as hell. And it sorta looks like the smoothness present on 344's digital release. Glad to know it looks better on the volume.

I don't mind it on other characters, but I can't say I like the use of a pressure sensitive brush for the facial wrinkles and details on Gedflynn. I always loved it when Miura went wild with the liner on old people's faces, look at this sad, destroyed old man and compare his wrinkles to Ged's

there just seems to be less hatching now in general, i mean look how many lines there are on the bottom of the pontiff's nose alone. the manga still looks amazing and I'm pretty sure when all the crazy shit goes down later in his arc, miura will go wild, i have no doubt.

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Wow, there's a huge difference in quality. YA's digital issue just looks filtered to oblivion, blurry as hell. And it sorta looks like the smoothness present on 344's digital release. Glad to know it looks better on the volume.

it looks even better in the volume.there is a little bit of blurriness but that's because the camera doesn't wanna focus.

the puck at the back of the volume seems to be traditionally painted, here he is in his full glory

there just seems to be less hatching now in general, i mean look how many lines there are on the bottom of the pontiff's nose alone. the manga still looks amazing and I'm pretty sure when all the crazy shit goes down later in his arc, miura will go wild, i have no doubt.

I interpreted the lack of hatching as a necessary change now that he's hatching with the larger, pressure sensitive brush. If he used the same number of strokes with it to try and describe form and shading as he did before, it would look confusing and "dirty". I mean, I bet he won't try this type of cross-hatching with his current brush settings:

And I agree that it still looks good, but I prefer the thin lines with no pressure sensitivity for some details, and I hope he adopts it again later.

Thanks for the pics! Puck looks digital to me, in fact he looks exactly like he does in that digital poster, and I don't mean only the exact same facial expression. Too softly rendered; figures "cut off" from the background (although I guess there's none to speak of here); the beherit's highlights give that digital brushstroke impression too, particularly around the mouth; the aura just looks like a simple layer on top in low opacity; the eyes have that Digital Miura dollish look, (with a bluish hue on his sclera too, just like in the other poster)... But I can't be sure with that quality, so I'll take your word for it right now.

Whew, you guys really outdid yourselves. Thanks Eluvei and Kaladin for the various images and analysis of the artwork. It's definitely more digital than I had expected, but I wasn't examining a few of the details that I should have (hatching on Schierke's hat for example).

I wonder if Miura spent some of his time off developing the skills necessary to transition to digital art.

Dude's just minutiously rendered, Gedflynn's wrinkles end up looking more suggestive and gracious with the brush and the economy of strokes that inevitably comes with it. It's not bad, and I suppose it fits the character, but I just like my old men looking like the bastard above and Miura does it like no one else with the thin lines.

Just to be clear, I'm pretty sure it's a design choice to have given Ged few wrinkles and not just a consequence of the tools.

Wow, there's a huge difference in quality. YA's digital issue just looks filtered to oblivion, blurry as hell. And it sorta looks like the smoothness present on 344's digital release. Glad to know it looks better on the volume.

Yep. I think it might come from the fact the image is blown up or something, or maybe it's just how their viewer works to allow for smooth changes in size. But the effect is bad enough that some of the smaller text is actually unreadable, even when zoomed in.

pav327

As a mainly digital artist myself, I can say for sure that digital media is much faster, cheaper and more convenient to work with. So, if anything, it should increase his prolificacy. And not only because he can copy and paste Azan's back multiple times throughout the chapters now. Page layouts, edits, applying screentones and fixing mistakes will take a significantly less time with digital. Time is probably the main reason he's trying digital.

I guess he is using Manga Studio (Clip Studio Paint), because it seems like an obvious software choice for a mangaka. With maybe some Photoshop help to manipulate a background elements.

The main disadvantage of digital is that everything looks too perfect, clean, soft and, as a result, unnatural. Traditional pen and paper creates a specific uneven texture by default and each line is uniqe. Though, it is possible to imitate a traditional tools and textures with the digital media and make it look just like a traditional drawing, especially if we are talking about ink drawings. Last couple of episodes could have been done completely in the digital media as far as I can tell.

I wouldn't say him experimenting with digital media is a bad thing, there are quite a few good mangakas who went completely digital and doing great with it, that I'm aware of. It's just a tool after all. He might not get the hang of it completely yet, but as he'll get more comfortable with it the result will improve for sure. Right now it seems that he's either using too thick of a brush or the size of a canvas/page is too small. So, as it was pointed out above, some of the hatching lines and contours are too thick comparing to the earlier episodes.

I hope he's using a Wacom Cintiq or some other monitor tablet, because this transition is probably somewhat painful for him after so many years of traditional drawing. And I hope he wasn't forced to do so by the publishing or because he's trying to cut down money expenses by doing everything by himself or anything like that, and it's just his own will to find a new more effective approach.

Personally, I would prefer a regular releases over a slightly better art. Especially, if he'll become better at working digitally.

And I hope he wasn't forced to do so by the publishing or because he's trying to cut down money expenses by doing everything by himself or anything like that, and it's just his own will to find a new more effective approach.

I don't see why Miura would suddenly decide to work alone after using assistants for 20 years. He's not in a financially precarious situation or anything. Either way, given that the recent episodes have been credited "Presented by Kentarou Miura with Studio Gaga", nothing seems to have changed on that front.

I think it's a really good sign it was kinda hard for most people to tell up until this point, and as many have said as he gets better and better who know what kind of crazy shit he can pull off with this medium.

As far as the double page spread of the forest looking a little strange goes, I'm wondering if maybe Miura was going for a glowing, magical look or something? The village looks a little awkward in the spread as well though.

Just to be clear, I'm pretty sure it's a design choice to have given Ged few wrinkles and not just a consequence of the tools.

Yeah I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I just wonder how he would have looked in the old style, since Miura always liked to meticulously hatch to imply volume on old men's faces. Maybe if he was introduced a couple episodes earlier we'd get something like this:

Didn't think I'd post here again so soon, but episode 345 has some subtle changes that make a difference. There's a lot more hatching going on, with a much bigger number of strokes, even some really thin cross-hatching on necks as opposed to only vertical lines going back the digastric triangle and down the neck as it was in 344 with maybe one exception.

I think pressure sensitivity has been turned off or greatly diminished for most hatching, it's almost indistinguishable from how it looked with traditional tools. Line weight looks to be more precise in general with the thicker brush, most noticeable in the last page's two closeups.

All of this is easily seen in a Ged panel that's likely been traced from the previous episode. Some strokes are left exactly as they were, but there's a bunch of new ones that help sculpt his old face a little better.

yeah you could clearly tell the difference, good to see that adjustments are already being made. however i wouldn't count on ged's face getting anymore detailed unless its some really dramatic shot, but like Aaz said its most likely a design choice and what reinforces that even further is the other gurus, their faces have more wrinkles and look more detailed in general. example below

another thing to note is, these past few episodes are full of small panels that have a bunch of characters, so he's drawing multiple characters and still still cramming some extra detail with some hatching, and even the square panels with only 1 character, still pretty small. if the face of one of the guru's or any other character took say half a page it would certainly look more detailed.

Guts' hair is always on point though i wonder how long it takes him to draw that alone.

Sorry guys, but I'm not convinced about Miura having gone fully digital

Generally Miura never stroke me as an artist to abandon all his traditional tools for digital programs, more so as someone who would take the advantages about the opportunities that digital programs offer him. By the end of the day, this guy has used since his childhood traditional brushes and pens, i doubt he would not use them anymore.

One of the most noticeable differences to me, and what makes me believe most of the lineart is now digital, is that he's using a thicker brush line for elements he previously used a liner like Pigma Microns on. Most predominantly, the hatching for shading on necks, and the inside of Schierke's hat.

On the top panel the strokes have no pressure sensitivity. It's most likely from a liner or a similar pen with no or little variation of size on pressure. On the bottom panel the strokes begin thin and get thicker, like with a brush. Something about the wobbliness I mentioned on previous posts and how the brushstroke goes from thin to thick very suddenly (something he had mastered with an actual brush so the variation was smoother and more natural) makes me believe that's digital lineart.

the paintings are digital so i'm just gonna skip that. when it comes to the black and white manga itself, what sticks out the most to me is how thick and smooth the line art is and how smooth the screentones are.

the line-art on ged looks like it was done with a standard round brush with some pen pressure, these kind of lines can be replicated easily. the screentone on his hat is light colored, smooth and less textured. the rain falling down is most likely on a completely seperate layer aswell. the shadow on ged's face that's coming from the hat is super smooth, it looks like a gradient, really even transition. they probably used that exact same screentone from the hat but made it very low opacity.

this here is a comparison between 2 panels, the panel on the top is guts from digital volume 38 which might i add looks very similar to the print volume 38 and the bottom panel is from the digital YA issue. as you can see, the top panel looks grainy and has texture to it, looks traditional. the bottom panel looks much smoother, the screentones are cleaner, they dont have those random white dots or texture that the top panel has. the lines on guts' hair look smooth and done with a digital brush with pen pressure.

The great thing about that panel is, that we have seen the actual manuscript in the behind the scenes video of the 2016 Berserk anime.

It's more than obvious that this has been drawn traditionally. The dry leftover brush strokes of Guts are enough to prove this. Generally Miura has been consistent with howhe draws certain parts of his characters face. Eyebrows, eyelashes and the hair of the characters have been mostly drawn with a brush. Often in the volumes we can even see some of the small white areas which hadn't been fully inked. For thinner lines he would use a Maru pen which has very small pen nib. I guess he probably used this mostly for detail while his main tool was a traditional G Pen. Now this is from episode 342 and unfortunately we don't have anything similar to the episodes after that.

In the case of the current art style, those thicker lines can and probably were simply drawn with a G Pen.

For reference, Naoki Urasawa actually once showed how thick and thin the lines of a G Pen can be.

Here is a screenshot from the documentary about him done by NHK

It's almost like a brush.

All in all, i think Miura and his team are simply taking advantages of digital programms, especially when it comes to stuff like screentoning or replicating drawings for scenes in which they fit in. It's really hard to pinpoint if Manga art is digital or traditional nowadays as most, if not everything is drawable via digital tools.

Kaladin didn't think that panel from volume 38 was drawn digitally, we know it's traditional. He used it as an example of how the digital releases are blurry and lower quality.

The brush strokes in Schierke's hat look digital, if you disagree with that I don't know what to say. It does not look like Miura's typical (and very precise in its weight) pen or brush stroke, at all. It's possible that he chose to make wobblier, thicker, extremely digital-looking lines after years of perfecting the traditional pen and brush, and simply scans his stuff so that his assistants can work digitally on top of it, but considering we were introduced to his digital paintings at the same time, and the fact that this sounds like a lot of unnecessary work, I'd bet on him just going fully digital.

But sure, it's possible that it's a mix of both. There's no way to know that for sure nowadays, like you said. I mean, Inio Asano applies Photoshop filters on photographs, prints them, and then draws on top of them with a pen for his backgrounds.

Kaladin didn't think that panel from volume 38 was drawn digitally, we know it's traditional. He used it as an example of how the digital releases are blurry and lower quality.

The brush strokes in Schierke's hat look digital, if you disagree with that I don't know what to say. It does not look like Miura's typical (and very precise in its weight) pen or brush stroke, at all. It's possible that he chose to make wobblier, thicker, extremely digital-looking lines after years of perfecting the traditional pen and brush, and simply scans his stuff so that his assistants can work digitally on top of it, but considering we were introduced to his digital paintings at the same time, and the fact that this sounds like a lot of unnecessary work, I'd bet on him just going fully digital.

But sure, it's possible that it's a mix of both. There's no way to know that for sure nowadays, like you said. I mean, Inio Asano applies Photoshop filters on photographs, prints them, and then draws on top of them with a pen for his backgrounds.

Yeah i know that he didn't say that the panel is digital. I pointed that manuscript out, simply because many people have been discussing the change of Miura having gone digital since we returned to Guts & Co.

The strokes inside Shierkes hat also can be easily be drawn with a brush or even a G Pen. Miura changes the way he draws things all the time. Wobbliness doesn't automatically mean that it is digital. Here is a simple example showing the difference between how Daiba was drawn back in the day and how he was drawn during Volume 38.

Volume 31

Volume 38

What i want to say is, only because some of the art looks wobblier it doesn't mean that it is digital. It also simply could be that Miura is using more of his brush or simply putting more pressure into his G Pen strokes, the same also goes for the inside of Shierkes hat.

its still pretty up in the air, for the paintings, its pretty clear that they're digital, the manga art itself however can go both ways. the fact that the art style is changing makes it even more difficult to come to a conclusion. is miura making these lines with different weights because he's simply changing the art style? or is it the product of a tablet and digital brushes? these same exact lines can be made digitally as well as traditionally like mangetsu said. and as i said in my first post what stands out to me the most is the screentones, as for the line art, i can't confidently say that its traditional or digital, I'm not fully convinced yet. he's been drawing traditionally for 20+ years, so it wouldn't make sense to abandon it for the digital medium, he's also been painting traditionally for that long a swell but now he's digitally painting. I'm not sure if that's a valid comparison since the techniques used for painting and drawing are different but just a thought. i guess we just have to continue reading and watch the evolution of this new style.

What i want to say is, only because some of the art looks wobblier it doesn't mean that it is digital. It also simply could be that Miura is using more of his brush or simply putting more pressure into his G Pen strokes, the same also goes for the inside of Shierkes hat.

I agree with you, it could be simply that. But these new attributes in his brushwork, that are very typical of someone starting to use digital brushes (even though they can be reproduced traditionally), showed up together with some things that are absolutely digital, like white lines for the cape and hairs, as well as the paintings, which we've discussed here. It's difficult for me to see it as a coincidence.

And honestly, I don't see why his growing up with a set of tools means he can't change them later. Moebius worked digitally at one point.

I just wanna quote this out cause it's such a concise demonstration of how different post production filters affect the art. The darker, grainier version is what we're 'used to' I guess, for scanned Berserk traditional ink art, and the pretty, filtered version is SO pretty that it gives us the impression of being possibly fully digital - and seeing the original art in hand there, I'm gonna assume that the pretty filter is meant to have the look of a photograph of the art.

this here is a comparison between 2 panels, the panel on the top is guts from digital volume 38 which might i add looks very similar to the print volume 38 and the bottom panel is from the digital YA issue. as you can see, the top panel looks grainy and has texture to it, looks traditional. the bottom panel looks much smoother, the screentones are cleaner, they dont have those random white dots or texture that the top panel has. the lines on guts' hair look smooth and done with a digital brush with pen pressure.

The great thing about that panel is, that we have seen the actual manuscript in the behind the scenes video of the 2016 Berserk anime.

I just wanna quote this out cause it's such a concise demonstration of how different post production filters affect the art. The darker, grainier version is what we're 'used to' I guess, for scanned Berserk traditional ink art, and the pretty, filtered version is SO pretty that it gives us the impression of being possibly fully digital - and seeing the original art in hand there, I'm gonna assume that the pretty filter is meant to have the look of a photograph of the art.

I think the filter is absolutely abysmal, not pretty at all. Kills a lot of essential detail. But yeah, it does help to give the "look" of digital art. I based my new impressions on a scan of 345 that's floating around though, not a digital filtered release, and I stand by my opinion that there's digital lineart at least in some places.